By Teresa Calvão, Professor and researcher at CENSE, NOVA FCT
The preservation of forests is essential to ensure a sustainable future for the planet. The European Union’s 2030 Forest Strategy proposes a set of measures to safeguard and consolidate the multifunctionality of forests, addressing social, economic and environmental aspects together, valuing the role of forest managers and owners. Is Portugal ready for this new paradigm?
Forest ecosystems are key components in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss. By absorbing and storing carbon, trees help mitigate the extreme impacts of climate. However, forests themselves face serious threats and growing pressures, with global warming being one of the main ones.
The strategy focuses on protecting, regenerating and sustainably managing forests. It commits to protecting primary and ancient forests, managing resources sustainably and promoting nature-based silvicultural practices. It encourages the efficient use of wood, prioritizing higher-value products and recycling it successively until the end of its useful life. In addition, it establishes a roadmap to plant three billion trees across Europe by 2030 and proposes new legislation to harmonize forest monitoring and data collection.
Portugal is actively aligning with the defined targets, seeking to harmonize its policy guidelines with the strategy’s directions. However, full compliance faces complex structural challenges. Namely, the land tenure structure of Portuguese forests may pose difficulties in implementation, since about 98 percent is private and, in some regions of the country, strongly fragmented.
Economic viability emerges as one of the greatest challenges to implementing the new strategy, given the additional burdens imposed on private and public actors. It becomes imperative to reconcile these demands with the sector’s competitive sustainability and the cohesion of rural areas. The transition to sustainable models imposes challenges such as high additional costs. Restoring ecosystems and reforestation require a substantial investment in labor and monitoring. At the same time, restrictions on logging and biomass exploitation threaten to reduce owners’ revenues. Therefore, it becomes vital to create financial incentives and payment schemes for ecosystem services.
Socially, the challenge is to ensure that the measures are socially fair and accepted, as restrictions on forest use can generate divergences with local populations. As the forest is a rural economic engine, these restrictions create fears of unemployment. In Portugal this scenario is aggravated by aging and depopulation of the interior, which lead to a shortage of skilled labor to manage the territory. There is also a strong need for technical training for sector actors and for conflict mediation among the different uses of the forest.
AI is crucial to meeting the defined targets, acting in essential areas such as firefighting, biodiversity monitoring, support to landowners and data harmonization.
The internal response to the EU Forests Strategy 2030 should be a hybrid model: defining the guidelines and funding are central. Some management strategies will be developed and implemented at the regional level, such as risk management; practical execution and operational management must be local, justified by territorial specifics and by the direct involvement of owners in operationalizing the measures.
